Piracy news

[redbeacon]

Record Labels charge Pirate Bay with copyright violations

 

http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/4410/piratebayrf0.jpg

 

Well-known pirated material site The Pirate Bay has been charged with its first clear copyright infringement case, according to reports. A combination of major movie labels and music studios, including EMI, Fox, Sony BMG, and Universal, accuse the Swedish-run site of profiting from linking to BitTorrents from pages with advertising; as much as $4 million US a year is generated through normal traffic, according to the Swedish prosecutor in the case, Hakan Roswall. Labels involved with the suit are demanding as much as a $188,000 fine for each of the four principal site operators and that computers they own be confiscated.

The investigation is said to be the result of a raid by Swedish police in May 2006, which collected information about The Pirate Bay's activities but drew attention through its motivating factors. Critics of major media companies as well as Pirate Bay supporters have accused the Swedish government of bending to requests from the British- and US-based media producers regardless of actual regulations.

 

The Pirate Bay has so far said it has no reason to fear the results of any court action and believes it will escape any punishment based on Swedish law. "[The plaintiffs] want to try to criminalize something we already know is legal," says site co-founder Peter Sunde.

 

A defeat is not expected to shut the site down; since the 2006 raid, the site has increasingly distributed its servers and other facilities to countries where few if any laws exist to shut down such content, preventing labels from issuing simple takedown requests or requesting help from local police.

[redbeacon]

Singapore court orders disclosure of illegal anime downloaders

by JapanToday

 

Singapore's High Court has ordered a local Internet service provider (Editor's note: It's confirmed to be Pacific Internet) to release the names of subscribers who are alleged to have illegally downloaded anime to Japanese anime studios, a move that would allow the producers to take legal action against fans in Singapore who flout copyright laws, a local news report said Wednesday. Woo Bih Li, presiding judge at the court, ruled the identities of these people should be released to six Japanese companies that are the copyright owners, rather than to their local distributor, the Straits Times said.

 

The court was responding to an appeal made by local anime distributor Odex Ltd. and the six Japanese companies as co-plaintiffs after a Singapore Subordinate Court ruled last year that Odex did not have the legal right to compel Pacific Internet Ltd. to divulge the names of illegal downloaders, and such action should be undertaken by the Japanese studios directly. Although the High Court rejected Odex's appeal for Pacific Internet to release the name list to the company, it ordered the Internet firm to release the list to the six Japanese anime studios.

 

As a result of the court decision, the names of a few hundred anime fans in Singapore who are alleged to have illegally downloaded anime online could be released to the Japanese companies over the next few weeks, an Odex official told Kyodo News.

 

The judgment would pave the way for the Japanese companies — Sunrise Inc, Kadokawa Pictures Inc, TV Tokyo Medianet Inc, GDH KK, Yomiuri Telecasting Corp and Showgate Inc — to undertake legal action against unlawful downloaders for copyright infringement, Odex said in a statement.

 

It "shows that those who persist in engaging in illegal downloading of anime programs can no longer use a breach of privacy as a reason to hide behind their Internet service provider," it said.

 

Last year, Odex managed to obtain court orders for two other Internet firms to release their name lists, but it failed in the case of Pacific Internet.

[jB]

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